Smile, You're on Candid Camera

Ruling that the area under a woman's skirt is private, an OC judge on Aug. 25 issued an arrest warrant for David Wayne Lyman, an Irvine computer programmer who allegedly used a hand-held camera to film up women's skirts at Fashion Island. Ironically, a different OC judge on the same day dropped similar charges against an Anaheim man, whose lawyer reportedly did not dispute his client put a video camera in a shopping bag and placed it on the ground at MainPlace mall in Santa Ana to shoot up women's skirts. Why the judicial confusion? No laws specifically target videographers whose idea of Citizen Kane is a brief, badly lit shot of an oblivious woman's moving crotch. In the Lyman case, Harbor Municipal Court Judge Geoffrey T. Glass ruled that under the skirt qualifies as a place where there is an expectation of privacy under a new section of the California Penal Code's disorderly conduct law that makes it a crime to film or videotape in restrooms, changing rooms or tanning salons. Newport Beach Police then arrested Lyman-16 days after a woman allegedly caught the 34-year-old mid-frame in the tony mall's KCET Store of Knowledge. And you thought the store's PBS commercials with the ghosts of Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin checking out customers were creepy. IRVINEDALE The Irvine City Council voted on Aug. 25 to deposit half a buh-buh-billion dollars to develop a football stadium on 440 acres of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS). The deal (and all that glorious cash) is being put together by a Santa Monica investment group that wants to snag the National Football League's 32nd franchise. Sadly, that expansion team is more likely going to Los Angeles, where investors have much deeper pockets. But Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis is piping off about moving back to LA. So if a stadium is built in Irvine, and the NFL gives LA the new team, and Al's still looking for a place to play, it can mean only one thing: ladies and gentleman, your Irvine Raiders! It's kismet, baby! Irvine came into being because of a land raider, it's now home to all kinds of corporate raiders, and much of the nearby El Toro MCAS has been targeted for takeover by airspace raiders. Lissenup, Irvine: beggars can't be choosers; embrace Al (be careful not to get that oily shit in his hair on you). But one piece of advice: Irwindale gave Davis $10 million and didn't get bubkes. Don't do that. CASH OUT Yolanda Manuel, the mother of the South-Central LA girl who was kidnapped, raped and strangled at a Nevada casino, led hundreds in a demonstration at UC Berkeley on Aug. 26 demanding that the university expel David Cash Jr. Cash, 19, of La Palma, reportedly admitted to seeing his friend Jeremy Strohmeyer struggling with 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson in a Primm Valley hotel bathroom in May 1997. Cash claimed he left before the girl was injured, but also conceded he did not come forward even after Strohmeyer told him what had happened. Cash sounds like scum, but Clockwork does not see what grounds UC Berkeley would have to kick out the nuclear-engineering major. He hasn't been arrested. Of course, we would be tempted to open a can of whupass in his presence. PLOT THICKENS There's a couple of Santa Ana city councilmen and a former council candidate who might be looking for that can of whupass. Roman Palacios, who along with the other three men was named in a federal indictment that alleges they concocted an elaborate extortion and money-laundering scheme, pleaded guilty on Aug. 28 to the one count against him. Palacios, who has been working with investigators for months, struck a plea-bargain agreement with prosecutors before the 24-count indictment was handed down on Aug. 25, federal authorities reportedly said. When the minister and ex-council candidate is sentenced on Jan. 11, he'll reportedly get much less than the maximum 20-year prison sentence, thanks to his upcoming starring role as the key witness against fellow candidate Hector Olivares and City Councilmen Ted Moreno and Tony Espinoza. Only Moreno is named in all counts, which cover conspiracy to extort and launder money, extortion, money laundering, and defrauding the public through false and misleading campaign reports and public statements.